JEDEC is a consortium of companies who seek to set standards in order to lower costs for their member companies.

Ideally they would like to base standards on freely available IP to reduce costs for member companies.

Occasionally JEDEC requires outside IP in order to make a standard work, and this they are supposed to secure before finalization of the standard.

DDR4 will require licensing of IP in load reduction and rank multiplication from Netlist (see below) – however since it has not been finalized yet, there is no hurry to license.

RAND licensing

Since a JEDEC standard is a powerful endorsement for a certain way of making a product, JEDEC can secure licensing on fair terms from holders of IP who stand to benefit from mass licensing of that IP.

This is especially true if JEDEC has the option of not using that IP and instead choosing another way of doing things.

If the company is a member of JEDEC, usually licensing on RAND terms (Reasonable and Non-discriminatory Licensing) is required of the member.

JEDEC power may however be diminished if the IP in question is essential to the way forward (load reduction and rank multiplication as currently used on LRDIMMs and expected to be used on DDR4).

However, once JEDEC has finalized that standard, that negotiating power is considerably diminished as the standard is already out there and there is a degree of “lock in” as products are already being made based on that standard.

Inphi currently the only maker of LRDIMM buffer chipsets – others have backed off – lost a challenge of Netlist IP at the USPTO – as a result the Netlist patents have become stronger and are going to come back and bite Inphi in Netlist vs. Inphi which was stayed pending these patent reexaminations – patents which survive reexamination can never again be challenged on those issues again – NLST patents ‘537 and ‘274 survived with ALL claims intact which is a powerful statement on the strength of their IP – Inphi has appealed to the BPAI but the USPTO decision is telling.

When Netlist vs. Inphi resumes, any recall of LRDIMMs or the non-availability of replacement LRDIMMs will constrain end-users of LRDIMMs.

Separately Inphi has dropped it’s retaliatory suit against Netlist unilaterally (I have examined the court docs in Inphi vs. Netlist docs and my feeling is that proceeding would have led to invalidation of two of Inphi patents – for double-patenting – basically same patent were filed using different authors and sent to two different examiners at the USPTO – as a blatant case of patent inflation !).

LRDIMMs buffer chipsets are sole-sourced by Inphi – if Inphi is prevented from making LRDIMM buffer chipsets then LRDIMMs may face recall as infringing product, or it may become impossible to replace faulty LRDIMMs with new LRDIMMs.

For a description of how other LRDIMM buffer chipset makers have reduced enthusiasm for LRDIMMs:

However IBM and HP have hedged their bets and are offering IBM HCDIMM and HP HDIMMs (based on Netlist HyperCloud memory).

The HyperCloud product is superior to the LRDIMMs:

– better latency than LRDIMMs
– interoperability with RDIMMs (LRDIMMs require all-LRDIMM on all DIMM slots)
– does not need BIOS update on motherboard to work (LRDIMMs require that)
– and a design that is being copied by DDR4 (see below)

The HyperCloud product also is manufactured by the inventor of load reduction and rank multiplication.

In contrast, LRDIMMs are based on a buffer chipset that is sole-sourced by Inphi (which holds little IP in this area and is facing a possible injunction in the future regarding use of load reduction and rank multiplication IP).

HyperCloud is also future ready (compared to the “end-of-life” architecture of the LRDIMMs) – DDR4 is copying HyperCloud in even greater detail than LRDIMMs were doing.

DDR4 licensing

DDR4 has dumped some of the asymmetrical lines and centralized buffer chipset choices in the LRDIMMs (which are the cause of high latency issues in LRDIMMs), in favor of an even closer following of the symmetrical lines and decentralized buffer chipset on the Netlist HyperCloud (see other articles here).

DDR4 will require licensing from Netlist (which might cover LRDIMM along the way) since at DDR4 low voltage and higher frequencies the need for load reduction becomes even more important.

On why lowered voltages for DDR4 increase the need for load reduction:

15 responses to “JEDEC fiddles with DDR4 while LRDIMM burns”

Looks like Samsung has the DDR4 comittee stacked in their favor. They were an original, major investor in IPHI’s IPO. Makes sense that they would push LRDMM approach instead of just going with Netlist. They are obviously using Netlist IP. Why the animosity between these two companies?

Inphi is heavily institutional owned. Their IPHI yahoo board is practically desolate. I am not sure they even have any retail investors. Yet until very recently IPHI did not even have a yahoo board – which I have not seen ever for a major company. The IPHI yahoo board was not created for YEARS since their IPO – despite repeated requests by folks on the NLST yahoo board.

Combine that with IPHI’s avoidance of ever mentioning NLST as a competitor in the IPHI conference calls, you have a picture of a company which is in denial (IPHI is able to mention IDTI their competitor in LRDIMMs however, so they are tongue tied only about some things and not others).

At the very least, IPHI is very careful and sensitive about open discussion of their company strategy and legitimacy.

From the looks of it IPHI is engaging in a strategy around LRDIMMs which not the behavior of an independent company. For that you can look at IDTI (which has prudently scaled back rhetoric on LRDIMMs and delayed LRDIMMs until Ivy Bridge).